"This is all of our businesses coming together," said Bonnie Nixon, director of environmental sustainability and global citizenship at Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, introducing a number of new green products and programs from the company's hardware, software and services groups at a press conference in San Francisco.

The additions to HP's Eco Solutions Program include everything from a downloadable widget that trains PC users to shut off their computers when not in use to an improved Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing administrators to renewed pledges for Energy Star and EPEAT compliance across several product stacks and accelerated goals for reusing recycled hardware materials.

But for data center operators and their channel suppliers, the big news from HP is likely to be Tuesday's introduction of 11 servers in the company's young ProLiant G6 lineup of server products, seven of which are based on AMD's new six-core processors, code-named Istanbul. HP initiated its G6 series with 11 servers on March 30, in concert with Intel's release of its Xeon 5500 series of server chips, code-named Gainestown, which are based on the chip maker's next-generation Nehalem microarchitecture.

As with the initial lineup of Intel-based ProLiant G6 servers, HP is promising startling return-on-investment time frames for customers refreshing older servers with the new Opteron-based models, all of which feature the elaborate sensor arrays and power management tools built by HP for the original G6 offering.

"These new energy-efficient servers use 50 percent less energy than an industry-standard server from 2005. That means that they pay for themselves on energy savings alone," said Doug Oathout, an HP vice president in charge of green initiatives in the company's Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS) group. Oathout claimed replacing a four-year-old server with a new AMD-based ProLiant G6 would yield ROI in six months, while switching out two-year old systems for the latest models would deliver payback in about a year.

Next: New ProLiant G6 Specs The latest additions to the HP ProLiant G6 portfolio based on AMD's six-core Istanbul processors number seven and include the HP ProLiant DL785, DL585, DL385 and DL165 rack-optimized servers and the HP ProLiant BL465, BL495c and BL685c server blades.

The ProLiant DL785 G6 is a four-socket server built around the new six-core Opteron 8400 series processors with a rack height of 7U. HP has yet to list the price for these systems. The DL585 G6 has a rack height of 4U and four sockets for the 2.6GHz Opteron 8435 and the 2.4GHz Opteron 8431, and is listed at $17,029 for a preconfigured system and $9,648 for a configurable unit.

The ProLiant DL385 G6 series includes four preconfigured SKUs -- a single-socket server with a 2.2GHz Opteron 2427 chip priced at $2,124, another single-socket unit with a 2.4GHz Opteron 2431 for $2,609, a two-socket system with a pair of 2.6GHz Opteron 2435 parts for $4,683, and the same two-socket system preloaded with HP's Insight Control power management software suite for $6,059. The single-socket ProLiant DL165 G6 lineup has two SKUs -- a $1,679 model based on the Opteron 2427 and a $3,929 version with the Opteron 2435, the top part in the six-core 2400 series.

The three new ProLiant G6-class blade servers range in price from $2,169 to about $9,000, though prices for the Opteron 8400 series-based ProLiant BL685c G6 systems are not yet listed on HP's Web site.

AMD's new six-core Opterons have 6 MB of total L3 cache, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and L1 cache is distributed as 64 KB of data cache plus 64 KB of instruction cache, per core. The five processors in the initial Istanbul lineup each draw 75 watts of power under average workloads.

In addition to the Opteron-based servers, the ProLiant G6 lineup now includes the DL4x170h, a $4,909 system; the DL2x170h, priced at $2,819; and the ML330, available for $1,199.

HP also introduced several green-oriented products and initiatives from its other business groups on Tuesday. The HP Compaq dc7900 Ultra Slim desktop computer is a low-power commercial unit aimed at small to midsize businesses that draws just 34 watts at idle and drops that number down to 3W in sleep mode. The unit's small footprint and nearly inaudible acoustics are partly due to HP's decision to go with an external power supply on the dc7900, which in addition to saving casing space, eliminates the need for an additional fan.

HP's Personal Systems Group is responsible for a new global consumer education campaign called Power to Change that features a downloadable widget that tracks the cumulative energy savings associated with participants turning off idle PCs when not in use.